A Kitten Called Cat

Chapter One - The 'Sleeping in the Dustbins' Image

I thought I'd found a perfect spot to sleep. There was this posh block of flats with shiny mirror windows and a big fancy garden. Security was pretty good, with lights and cameras and things. There were spiky metal railings along the road but a couple of them were a bit bent and, because I was so skinny, I could just squeeze through the gap.

They had a little shed thing where they kept their dustbins and it wasn't even locked. So, as long as I didn't come in before dark and was gone before people started coming down in the mornings, I was dry, warm and pretty comfy.

And I felt safe.

It must have been about the third night when I was woken by a man's voice saying, "Hello, hello! What have we here?" He seemed to think it was pretty funny but I wasn't fooled. I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and tried to scarper but he grabbed me by the wrist... and, when I struggled, he tightened his grip.

He put his empty coffee cup into a bin then shifted his grip from my wrist to my hand and led me out. He wasn't rough or anything but somehow he let me know that it would be a bad idea to resist. I felt a bit numb as he led me into the glass fronted reception bit at the front of the building. There were about ten lifts and, before I knew what was happening, I was inside one and then stepping out into his apartment.

The place was just incredible, all shiny metal and glass and beautifully polished wood. I'd seen places like this on telly but I'd never thought they existed in real life.

We were up on a bit of a platform, looking down on a huge, open living room with comfy chairs and a thick carpet. There was a shiny, black grand piano on one side and, on the other, three identical white leather sofas looking towards the biggest telly I'd ever seen. The whole back wall was one huge window giving this amazing view out over the lights of the city centre a couple of miles away.

Just to the left was a flight of stairs made of thick lumps of wood which seemed to be hanging in mid air. It led up to a balcony type thing.

The man looked at me for a second then decided that I was too dirty and smelly for his lovely room. "Come this way," he told me. He led me off to the right, into this shiny modern kitchen where he helped me up onto a high stool at a fancy island thing in the middle.

And, it was only when he let go that I realised that he'd been holding my hand all this time.

"So, what have we got here?" he asked. He stood back a bit to have a look at me and then, without bothering to ask for permission or anything, he folded back the hood of my hoodie. He studied me for ages as if I was sitting under a microscope... or, more likely, as if I was something horrible he'd just found on the bottom of his shoe.

And then I managed to work out how much trouble I was in... I was all alone in a strange man's flat. How could I have been so stupid?

"Go on..." I heard myself saying. I wasn't even frightened, just pissed off with myself for letting it happen. "You might as well just get on with it."

He gave me a puzzled look then said, "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

"You might as well just get on and fuck me... I promise I won't tell anyone, I mean, who'd believe me anyway... just don't hurt me."

He gave me a severe frown before taking one of my hands and giving me the slightest of slaps on the back of my wrist. It didn't really hurt; it wasn't meant to. It was just meant to show who was boss and it certainly did that.

"I don't approve of young ladies using indelicate language," he told me.

It was such a weird thing for him to say that I forgot all about the terrible position I was in. "I'm not a young lady," I snarked back at him.